Hunting For The Flavors & Texture Of Yesteryears'

White Meats

White meat emphasises not the appearance and strength of taste, but the fat content, it is synonymous with lean meat. Chicken, pork, fish and other seafood, even fatty and dark-fleshed fishes such as salmon, mackerel, and tuna, are included in this category of meat. White meats also have lower levels of myoglobin.

During lunch with FoodnTravella last Sunday afternoon, we were told by her friend that there was a fish head curry in the Zim Sum Restaurant premises on Anson Road that operates in the evening. And of cause after getting wind of the stall, we decided to try out the fish head curry a few days ago after running some errands and meeting some clients. The stall is run by an uncle and his assistant (worker lah), and it offers fish head curry, fish meat curry, fried balacan chicken and omelette.

The curry is made to order and there are a few sizes to choose from in terms of fish head size and pieces of fillet required. The one we had was RM22 and it was quite a big piece of head and belly, as you can see from the following photos. The fish head was bigger than the size of my wife’s palm and there were lots of okra, tomato, onion strips and mint leaves. Taste wise it is not very exclusive or unappealing; it was actually comparable to some of the more “famous” curry fish head businesses in Penang. The curry was predominantly sour with a sweet after taste and was not too spicy. The longer the fish sits in the curry gravy, the thicker it gets. Even though the curry was made from curry powder, the gravy was neither sandy nor grainy in texture.

Other than the curry, we also tried their balacan chicken which ranges from RM5.50 to RM11.00. The chicken is also made to order. The taste of balacan was light and the texture of the chicken was crisp on the surface and tender in the inside. If you are not a fan of fish head curry, you could try their balacan chicken, egg and rice set which I saw quite a few ordering. Address: 35, Jalan Anson 10400, Penang

Have you heard or try Savory Tang Yuan before?

It is truly a “Forgotten Recipe” from Hakka & Cantonese Dialect. We have received many readers request about this savory tang yuan recipe since we’ve posted the winter solstice from 2008.
Other than we talk about the sweet version which has tones of fans, we rather share those who are forgotten and unique from the rest.
We have prepare the steps with photo and recipe below, and do enjoy the cooking and happy winter solstice to you & your family 🙂

Savory Tang Yuan Soup

Tang Yuan:

I don’t really know what and how to make the tang yuan dough, but all I know is using glutinous four to makes it up…heee

The only tips that I can share is, cook the tang yuan in boiling water and wait until its float on top of the water, and its cooked. And throw them immediately into Ice Water. This step is to make the ball springier and doesn’t go lumpy /mushy.

We don’t really measure what we cook for this Soup, and is all according to the taste

Soup base (basic soup base for wonton noodle soup):

Handfuls of Dried Soya Bean

Handfuls of Dried Anchovies

Chicken or Pig born

Water for soup

Ingredient:

Cabbage (coarsely shredded)

Chicken gizzard (thick slices)

Pork belly 600gm or more (in whole pcs)

Spring onion (4cm in length)

Home fried shallots

Step by Step:

Put Soya Bean & Anchovies into soup bag/sachet. Don’t insert the bag too full, when it cooks, the beans will be bloated. The ideal portion is 1/3 of the bag. Or put those 2 ingredients in 2 different bags.

After filled in the Soya Bean & Anchovies in the bag, put them all into boiling water and cover the lid, with medium to low heat, and cook about 30min or until you can smell the aroma.

Take out the soup bag. Leave the soup aside.

Boil water in another pot, to poach the whole pcs of pork belly and chicken gizzard until it’s done or tender. Take out and drain. Cut them into thin slices when it’s cooled. Set both aside.

Warm up the Anchovies soup and throw the cabbage in and cooked till tender. Add Salt to taste. Drain the Vege and set aside.

Basically the cooking step is all done.

Eating Step:

Just heat up the soup, scope all the precooked ingredient, tong yuan, cabbage, gizzard, pork belly, spring onion, and pour the steaming hot soup into the bowl and top with some homemade fried shallot. Enjoy!

Those precooked ingredient and soup can keep into the refrigerator and you may heat up for the next day. Except tang yuan, its good when eat its fresh.

The ‘Empurau’ is freshwater fish which is native in Sarawak, and has its habitat in clean/clear fast moving streams. This fish has tender and rich textured flesh with special aroma which is mainly due to its special diet of ‘Buah Kabang’ or Engkabang(as in The Star). For the fish to be suitable for the table, it needs to be at least 3kg and above so that the flesh would have firm body. Anything below 3 kg would result in soft texture flesh which is due to the high fat content. The older and heavier it gets the flesh would firm up but the essential fats are still maintained.

The price of this is mainly due to its availability of quality catch that mainly comes from interior areas in Sarawak. The Empurau can be found wild in Bakun and also Kapit, but the later produces the best fish amongst the two. There are also entrepreneurs that are beginning to farm this fish on the Malaysian Peninsular in view of the price tag that it carries, but the quality of the flesh is yet to be determine. There are also cases where the so called ‘Empurau’ is being imported from our neighboring country, Indonesia.

So far places that offer ‘Empurau’ in Penang that we heard of are Ocean Green, Bali Hai and Pearl Palace. Our Friend, Wong has his home town in Sarawak, and thus have the resources to acquire wild ‘Empurau’ from the Kapit region which is said to be to have the best quality fish in Malaysia.

Our first night in Hong Kong, we were treated to a scrumptious dinner on a floating fish farm(鱼排) which is just a stone’s throw from mainland China by Gill’s uncle-in-law. The seafood that we had were very fresh, in fact they still swimming in the sea when we were deciding the dishes that we wanted to try.

When the boat touch base at the floating fish farm, we noticed that one of their clients had just caught a live cuttle fish. And the not so shy me started to get my gears ready to capture the not often seen, live, sea creature in Penang.

After taking a short walk through the fish farm and choosing the ingredients for the night, we settled down to our wobbling table. Each time a boat passes through the area, the whole place would wobble, but not too violently though. To quench our thirst, we got ourselves some beer and soft drinks that were foreign to our eyes. One of the beers that we had was ‘Blue Girl’, a German beer brewed in Hong Kong. This beer was smooth and malty. It had a slight sweetness to its end. Too bad it is not found in Malaysia, or else Carlsberg & Tiger would be knock out of spot by this German lass.

As the drinking started, the dishes also begun its course. The first to come was the poach cuttle fish. The cuttle fish flesh was tender and sweet, and when dipped into their soya sauce the sweetness was even more distinctively brought out by the saltiness of the sauce. In Penang, live cuttlefish is hard to come by the market place!

Then we had freshly harvested clams. The texture was firm and the taste was sweet and earthy, which the sauce did not overwhelm..

I am no a crab person, but when it come to tasting I will get my hands dirty. The crab that we had was definitely fresh as the flesh was still firm and juicy, taste wise it was sweet to the end.

Up next on the table was another clam species. This one was cooked with less heat in it, it had a nutty tasting sauce. This clam is almost similar to the ‘kappa’ that we have in Malaysia. It tasted sweet and earthy with a firm body.

On our diner list there were 2 types of scallops served, one seen here is the more common type that we may find in Penang or Malaysia which is the ‘Fan Scallop’ (扇贝).

Then there is the second type of scallop which shell looks like the horns of a bull and triangular in shape. This scallop dish was prepared by just steaming and then seasoned with their in-house sauce. Savory, nutty and sweet.

Then there is the fish, which we did not put much attention to as were almost full and were busy chit chatting and drinking. The only thing I can remember was that the fish was steam to just near cooked in the mid section. Thus, we were asked to start picking from the sides to the middle.

The ‘kailan’ with salted fish was a bit too salty and the texture was fiberish and chewy.

Chicken was different from our local chicken species. It had a yellowish skin colour and the meat firmer, but the version served here was just average, nothing to shout a bout.

Well that was the end of our first day in Hong Kong. Next up would be Day 2 and our exploration at Tai O and Tai Yu san.

腊

After reaching KL from Penang, we headed to Rocket United for a very late dinner and call it a day, last night. Today, we had skip breakfast to get some work done. For lunch we had quick and easy one somewhere around Desa Petaling, chicken rice was what we had. I don’t know the road name but here’s the coordinates to the place.

The chicken rice shop/stall that we had our lunch was call ‘Sang Kee’. They serve poached and roasted chicken, ‘suen choi’ or sour vegetables soup and ‘char siew’. The chickens that they have are quite big in size and very meaty, plus customers can choose from either farmed chicken or free range chicken depending on your preference.

On that hot Friday afternoon, we only had desire for poach free range chicken and ‘char siew’ with a side order of ‘suen choi’. The poached chicken skin was yellowish in color similar to those seen on Hong Kong serials, ‘wong yau kai’ or direct translation yellow oil chicken. The last time I had chicken that looked like this was last year in Setiawan and Pangkor Island while attending wedding dinners of relatives. The poach chicken at ‘Sang Kee’ was quite meaty but a bit bland for my taste buds. The skin was firm and rich though.

As for the ‘char siew’, it had quite a good ration of lean meat and fats, and the taste was above average with a sweeter after taste. A must have for me, if we do go back again.

I can’t speculate about the ‘suen choi’ for I was afraid that my stomach acid was acting up again, but from Gill’s feedback was that it also have an above average taste.

The chicken rice was normal, it had a very light seasoning with chicken essence which some may not have even tasted its presence if he she is accustom to out side food. And the accompanying broth was very light, clear and sweet, with a hint of cabbage flavor in it…very comfortable soup. And that was all we had for lunch.

In the early evening we had attended the AFC preview party at NEO, after which we headed Jalan Kasah for ribs at Ribs by Vintry. We have been to that area for Italian food, but not to either Ribs or their sister restaurant Vintry.

We were told ribs, be it beef or pork, were their specialty at Ribs by Vintry, so for our mains we ordered 2 variations of pork ribs. One was their ‘Saute Butter Cream Sauce Ribs’ and the other was their BBQ pork ribs. And for desserts we shared their, also specialty, ‘Tiramisu’.

Gill was praise for the ‘Saute Butter Cream Sauce’ which was different, or fusion in taste. This variation of cream sauce was surprisingly fresh with the usage of some Asian herbs (lemon grass and some hint of orange peel) and not too overwhelming in terms of the after taste. The accompanying sautéed potato was equally tasty and creamy with a fluffy texture, but not much could be said about the side vegetable salad. Ribs wise, my only complains are that there were not enough meat on them and there was a hint of that ‘frozen’ meat taste left in the ribs. I was told that the ‘frozen’ meat taste was the effect of importing the ribs from Europe to acquire the the cut and taste that the chef wanted to present to their customers. Local pork ribs could have been sufficient, but then it is hard to get consistent supply of the cut and texture that the chef want. We too also have found that same cut of pork from different pork sellers in different areas have varied taste and texture. This may be due to the feed, age and condition of the pigs reared in.

The BBQ pork ribs also shares the same ‘frozen’ taste problem and insufficient meat on the bones. Taste wise, it tasted similar to the common BBQ ribs offered else where except the extremely smooth potato mash that was hidden at the bottom of the ribs.

The ‘Tiramisu’ was at first the most criticised item we had for the night at Ribs by Vintry. The ‘Tiramisu’ was bland(no cheesy richness or taste), no liquor taste and the biscuit was already soggy. This biscuit actually reminded me of water soaked dry corn cereal(Nestum). And it was one of the reasons or products that gave us a better insight of the confidence and responsibility of the staffs of the restaurant. After we made our complaints known on paying, we were assured that our grievances will be looked into. And immediately the cashier, Edmund, went into the kitchen to look into our feedback and brought another glass of their signature ‘Tiramisu’ for us to reevaluate. We tried it and it was a lot better than the glass that we paid for. The cheese taste was richer, there was a stronger hint of ‘Kahlua’ flavor and the biscuit was still firm.

To sum up our experience at Ribs by Vintry:

Taste & Texture: 3.3/5 (The pork ribs were slightly hard in texture and lack meat, but the fusion type sauce was something refreshing to our taste buds)Money Value : 3.0/5 (not a whole lot, but sufficient to last out the whole bowl )Service: 3.9/5 (not much attention during our dining due to under staffing, but the effort to answer our complains were main decision maker in our grading here)Cleanliness: 3.5/5Atmosphere: 3.5/5

Siong Ho Fish Head Bee Hoon has ceased operation at Weld Quay in Penang and has moved to Johor.

Some months back, we were given the opportunity to taste the skills of Mr.Teh who had 20 years of experience in cooking fresh seafood noodle and porridge. And of course, using fresh seafood is a must in his rule. You can choose from the variety of ingredients available to create your own taste preference and bowl of noodle or porridge that you would like to enjoy. The food is prepare almost instantly upon your instructions and choice.

The Boss of Siong Ho. Mr.Teh (Ah Ho) prepared the noodle for us personally.

We were served with Cold White Nutmeg Juice with Plum – RM1.70 per glass

Once the hot bowls arrived to the table the cameras were like bees to honey…. lol

Clear Soup with Fried Bass Fillet & Thin Vermicelli – RM5

The fish came in chunks rather in fillets; we can still taste the freshness from the fish meat although it has been deep fried. The clear Soup is pretty clear with some natural sweetness.

PrawnTom Yam Soup with Instant Noodle – RM9 for 3 large prawns

Here comes the tom yam withbig prawn. A point to put forth is that thetom yam soup is not so oily, and it taste milder and smoother compare to the others.

Based on Mr.Teh said he had the tom yam powder and paste further enhanced to achieve their version of tom yam that he wants to serve. I personally prefer this kind of tom yam with less oil with a smoother soup “texture”. I dare not consume the “Fiery” type of tom yam soup; I would easily choke and cough to death. 😛

Clear Soup with Prawn and Thin vermicelli – RM9 for 3 large prawns

You can taste the seafood ingredients’ sweetness in the soup!

Clear Soup with Squid & Instant Noodle – RM5

The squid was cooked to just the right firmness without the chewy texture. The combination was with instant noodles, which were soaked a little too long in the soup, and thus making them soggy. The instant noodles do not go well with squid.

Fresh Grouper Fillet Porridge – RM7.50

The grouper fillets were fresh and came in thick flaky slices. The Porridge they served here uses cooked rice that are further cooked in their clear soup stock with the selected choice ingredients to produce a piping hot bowl of porridge. Usually preserved vegetable or “dong chai” will be added in this type of porridge to give it a special sweet and salty flavour.

Frog Porridge – RM12 (RM6/100gms)

See the naked frog? The chunky frog meat tasted sweet and fresh. Is was far more tastier as compared the to the frogs that we had at “Sin Gelang Claypot Frog Porridge”.

we thought that was all, then came another batch of noodles….

Clear Soup with Crab & Thick Vermicelli – RM10 (RM5/100gms)

The sweet taste of the crab was in every mouthful soup that we had. Even with just a small sip of the soup, you could tell the distinctive crabbiness.

If you are coming from the ferry terminal, keep an eye on the landmarks on your left, you can slow down your car or get a parking lot right after the Mixed Surname Jetty. The shop is just few doors away.

Interviewed By Kwong Wah

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